SOARC, P.O. BOX 1164, GRANTS PASS, OREGON 97528
VISIT THE SOARC WEBSITE AT: http://www.qsl.net/soar/SOARC/
EDITOR: MIKE WRIGHT, N7GEI, 432 GRANDVIEW AVE., G. P., OR 97527
PHONE: 541-471-0440 E-MAIL:
February is half over and I have not recovered from Christmas yet. Thirty-four days to spring -- that can't be right. I have not done any of the winter things I saved up all summer. I want to play with my radios but I am too tired, too busy, and don't remember how. It is time for club again, so I hope to see you all there. New board, new blood, so let's see what happens.
CUL, Jim, WA6OTP
We're approaching that time of the year again when ham-related events begin springing up all over the place! Coming up sooner than later will be Boatnik, Seapac, Field Day, and the SOARC/JARS Potluck/Swap Meet. Seapac this year will be June 18-20. You can get the details online at the seapac.org website.
We have more great recipes for you in this Gnus and we will continue to print them as long as you keep sending them.
Resolve to accomplish at least one major task this year -- upgrade, build something, explore a new mode, elmer a new ham -- anything to help rekindle the ham flame!
If you have anything to submit for publication in the Gnus, see the contact information below the masthead.
73, Mike, N7GEI
Western Belles is a women's ham radio chat group that meets at 7:30 PM on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month on the 147.300 repeater. Please check in!
The ladies get together regularly for lunch and all female hams are invited to attend.
Our next luncheon will be at 11:30 on Saturday, March 6th, at Elmer's Restaurant, 175 NE Agness Ave., near the I-5 Foothill Exit.
NEXT CLUB MEETING
TUESDAY, 17 FEBRUARY
1900
SENIOR CENTER
3RD & B STREETS
GRANTS PASS
The SOARC VE test sessions this year will be held on March 26th, July 30th, and November 26th.
The exams are conducted at 1830 on the last Friday of the month in the Senior Center cafeteria (our regular meeting place). Volunteer examiners should be there at 1800.
The exam costs $12.00 and is available to all, first come, first served, with no reservation necessary.
73, Bill Tyner, WX7U, VE Liaison
Goss' Macaroni Salad
Coat the roni evenly as you mix in all the ingredients. You may need to add more later as the roni soaks it in. We try to make it the night before (24 hours is best) so that the ingredients can blend. Tasting is a must, especially for salt content.
The bread we made in our machine was Krustez brand Italian Herb, I think.
The dessert was a family recipe my friend adapted from a magic cookie bar. We were taking Spanish at the time, hence the name:
"Conglomerato Delecto"
9X9 pan--spray with spray
Layer each on the other sprinkling evenly to the sides:
Mint chips don't seem to taste as well as regular chocolate chips. Same with other nuts--it is not the same.
Cook at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until the sides are brown. The sides will be pretty crunchy. Wait until mostly cooled to cut. It may be to hard to cut if you wait until it is completely cooled.
If you have a large crowd, or get addicted, double all ingredients and put in a 9 X 13 pan.
Enjoy!
Nancy Goss, KD6NCM
Huttenga's Chicken & Rice
Mix minute rice, mushroom and celery soups, milk, and 1/2 pkg onion soup in casserole dish. Submerge chicken in mixture. Sprinkle remaining onion soup over the top.
Bake in a 325 degree oven for two hours or place ingredients in crock pot and cook on low for 8-10 hours. It tastes best when baked in the oven. I use the crock pot when I want to come home to a hot meal in the evening and not have to fuss with it when I get home.
Hope you enjoy it!
Dick Huttenga, KD7WIA
Jones' Enchilada Casserole
Cook hamburger with onion. Drain the fat and add enchilada sauce, olives, and chili powder. Spray a casserole pan and place the mixture and cheese in alternate layers with broken tortillas. Water should be added last. Place in a 350-degree oven for half an hour.
73, Bobbie Jones, KD7PHS
Seutter's Green Beans Oriental
Cook green beans in boiling salted water as directed on the package. Drain and set aside.
Melt butter in frying pan. Add onion, bean sprouts, and drained, sliced chestnuts. Cover pan and cook for 3 to 4 minutes.
Arrange half of green beans in a buttered 2 ½-qt casserole; spread with half the bean sprout mixture.
Combine the soup with milk; spoon half of it over vegetables.
Repeat layers of bean sprouts and soup. Sprinkle with cheese and bake, uncovered, in 400-degree oven for 25 minutes.
Remove from oven and cover with onion rings. Return to oven for five minutes. Makes 8 to 10 servings.
Note: Dish can be assembled as long as a day ahead and refrigerated until cooking time.
Strawberry Jello 2 small pkgs cherry Jello 2 cups boiling water 2 10-oz pkgs frozen strawberries, thawed 1 small can crushed pineapple, with juice 2 ripe bananas, mashed 1 pint sour cream
Put first five ingredients together to make Jello mixture. Put half in 9x12 pan and let set. Spread sour cream on Jello in pan. Pour rest of unset Jello on top of sour cream. Chill.
73, JoAnne Seutter, N6OJF
By Jan Moller, K6FM
By the time my job petered-out and we moved to California in 1976, I had over a 100 countries confirmed (it is harder with a US call) and also aquired a 5BWAS. That was a fun effort; the hardest part was to work neighboring-states on 10 and 15 m because of the skip.
We ended up in Simi Valley, near LA, and the search for tower and antenna began again. A fellow at work had a Telrex 20m monobander cheap and the local radio club found me a 52-foot crank-up tower. That was a good pair, most of the good DX was then found on 20 m and the hunt began, happily with my new call K6FM. By then I had discovered that many of the DX stations worked split, to be more efficient, so the old SB-301 was replaced with a Kenwood TS-850S with an outboard second VFO. I also had a new SB-220 PA to make the competition with the California superstations easier.
The high winds in Simi Valley caused an unusual accident in 1984. A pulley shaft sheared off in the tower, which sank down and caused the stays to go slack which promptly made the wind bend the tower over our house. The Telrex boom punched a hole in the roof that cost $200 to repair!
Fortunately, insurance helped me get a new tower, and the beam could be repaired, but I was off the air for a while. I still have that tower today; it has cost me a fortune to move to Flagstaff, AZ, when I worked there, and then up to Grants Pass, OR, when I retired for good. Flagstaff was interesting--the house lot was so crowded with trees that I hade to replace the 20 m beam with a smaller Explorer 14, but it was a good DX location, except for 80 m work. The area was so dry that it was necessary to lay out a large ground net for a counterpoise to get any antenna efficiency at all on that band. The 48-inch average snowfall in wintertime helped, but not much.
Finally, in 1989, we moved to Grants Pass and settled down as retirees. My DX country count was now up to over 200 and I had plenty of time to operate. With the new WARC bands, I needed a transceiver that covered them too and settled for the TenTec Omni V with it’s dual VFO’s and a very quiet rx. This was a fully transistorized rig that required no tuning, so it saved much time when bandhopping.
This was a great time to chase DX. A sunspot maximum was approaching (1991) and personal computers came into general usage, providing new sources of instant DX information. Previously, I had subscribed to a weekly DX newsletter but Internet bulletin boards such as DX Summit and DX Central made station and frequency data available the moment they appeared on the air, making them easier to find. In addition, several free DX newsletters are published over the internet weekly and propagation software can be downloaded that helps you to determine when and on what band it is feasible to reach a certain country. It became a new ballgame.
The results showed in the records. By 1992 I had passed 300 and seven years later 329. It was much harder to find new ones now but the ultimate goal, to work all DXCC countries, was at least a possibility. As the year 2001 approached, only two countries remained, North Korea, where ham radio was prohibited, and Bouvet Island, a Norwegian possession in the south Atlantic near Antarctica without population. But we were lucky--a Norwegian scientific expedition to Bouvet included an American Navy doctor, N4BQW, who put a station on the air under terrible stormy weather conditions and kept it going till April 2001.
Christmas 2001 gave the world’s DXers a great present; a UN worker, 4L4FN, in North Korea got a provisional permit to operate a ham station there. The pileups on him were terrific but he was a skilled operator and worked many thousands of hams before, for political reasons, he was shut down later the following fall. And I got my last country!
Today, I still have my old Explorer 14 on the 60 ft tower, augmented by a Butternut HF6 vertical for all HF bands, a 10 MHz horizontal loop, and a halfwave sloper for 18 MHz. An FT-1000MP Mark V Field transceiver with dual receivers was added to make split operations easier.
73, Jan Moller, K6FM
President: Jim McNutt, WA6OTP, 479-5630
Vice President: Bill Tyner, WX7U, 476-2703
Secretary: Sean Smithers, N7ZWU, 476-7964
Treasurer: Ann Randall, KB7TGO, 476-2456
Board of Directors:
Mike Wright, N7GEI, 471-0440
Cy Potts, W7MQL, 471-0522
Anita Malmstrom, KC7MGH, 476-2339
Bill Leiken, KC7IXX, 846-7682
Warren Olney, KB7EKF, 474-3575
SB QST @ ARL $ARLB003
ARLB003 ARRL to Propose New Entry-Level License, Code-Free HF Access
ZCZC AG03
QST de W1AW
ARRL Bulletin 3 ARLB003
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT January 20, 2004
To all radio amateurs
SB QST ARL ARLB003
ARLB003 ARRL to Propose New Entry-Level License, Code-Free HF Access
The ARRL will ask the FCC to create a new entry-level Amateur Radio license that would include HF phone privileges without requiring a Morse code test. The League also will propose consolidating all current licensees into three classes, retaining the Element 1 Morse requirement--now 5 WPM-only for the highest class. The ARRL Board of Directors overwhelmingly approved the plan January 16 during its Annual Meeting in Windsor, Connecticut. The proposals--developed by the ARRL Executive Committee following a Board instruction last July--are in response to changes made in Article 25 of the international Radio Regulations at World Radiocommunication Conference 2003 (WRC-03). They would continue a process of streamlining the amateur licensing structure that the FCC began more than five years ago but left unfinished in the Amateur Service license restructuring Report and Order (WT 98-143) that went into effect April 15, 2000.
''Change in the Amateur Radio Service in the US, especially license requirements and even more so when Morse is involved, has always been emotional,'' said ARRL First Vice President Joel Harrison, W5ZN, in presenting the Executive Committee's recommendations. ''In fact, without a doubt, Morse is Amateur Radio's 'religious debate.'''
The entry-level license class--being called ''Novice'' for now--would require a 25-question written exam. It would offer limited HF CW/data and phone/image privileges on 80, 40, 15 and 10 meters as well as VHF and UHF privileges on 6 and 2 meters and on 222-225 and 430-450 MHz. Power output would be restricted to 100 W on 80, 40, and 15 meters and to 50 W on 10 meters and up.
''The Board sought to achieve balance in giving new Novice licensees the opportunity to sample a wider range of Amateur Radio activity than is available to current Technicians while retaining a motivation to upgrade,'' said ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ. Under the ARRL plan, current Novice licensees--now the smallest and least active group of radio amateurs--would be grandfathered to the new entry-level class without further testing.
The middle group of licensees--Technician, Tech Plus (Technician with Element 1 credit) and General--would be merged into a new General license that also would not require a Morse examination.
Current Technician and Tech Plus license holders automatically would gain current General class privileges without additional testing. The current Element 3 General examination would remain in place for new applicants.
The Board indicated that it saw no compelling reason to change the Amateur Extra class license requirements. The ARRL plan calls on the FCC to combine the current Advanced and Amateur Extra class licensees into Amateur Extra, because the technical level of the exams passed by these licensees is very similar. New applicants for Extra would have to pass a 5 WPM Morse code examination, but the written exam would stay the same. Sumner said the Board felt that the highest level of accomplishment should include basic Morse capability. Current Novice, Tech Plus and General licensees would receive lifetime 5 WPM Morse credit.
''This structure provides a true entry-level license with HF privileges to promote growth in the Amateur Service,'' Harrison said.
Among other advantages, Sumner said the plan would allow new Novices to participate in HF SSB emergency nets on 75 and 40 meters as well as on the top 100 kHz of 15 meters. The new license also could get another name, Sumner said. ''We're trying to recapture the magic of the old Novice license, but in a manner that's appropriate for the 21st century.''
The overall proposed ARRL license restructuring plan would more smoothly integrate HF spectrum privileges across the three license classes and would incorporate the ''Novice refarming'' plan the League put forth nearly two years ago in a Petition for Rule Making (RM-10413). The FCC has not yet acted on the ARRL plan, which would alter current HF subbands.
The ARRL license restructuring design calls for no changes in privileges for Extra and General class licensees on 160, 60, 30, 20, 17 or 12 meters. Novice licensees would have no access to those bands.
See ''ARRL to Propose New Entry-Level License, Code-Free HF Access'' on the ARRL Web site, http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2004/01/19/1/, for the specific subband allocations ARRL is proposing for each class.
NNNN
/EX
An Oregon girl considered a year ago as the youngest General class licensee http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/01/31/4/ in the US now may be the country's youngest Amateur Extra ticket holder. Seven-year-old Mattie Clauson, AD7BL (ex-KD7TYN and ex-KD7SDF), of Roseburg passed her Extra examination January 14 during a Valley Amateur Radio Club http://www.valleyradioclub.org/ ARRL-VEC volunteer examination session in Eugene. The FCC granted her new ticket and Extra-appropriate call sign on January 20.
"I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I PASSED MY EXTRA CLASS EXAM!!!!! YIPPEEE!!!" Mattie exclaimed loudly on the QRZ.com http://www.qrz.com/detail/AD7BL Web site. She also announced her accomplishment in a message routed via the RS0ISS packet system on the International Space Station. "Looks like a future astronaut to me," Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) Chairman Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, remarked after learning of the post.
Mattie says she'd at least like to talk with one of the ISS astronauts some day. She's also a member of the ISS FanClub http://www.issfanclub.com/ and enjoys digipeating through RS0ISS.
Mattie's proud papa, Tim Clauson, AC7SP, says his daughter missed only four of the questions on the Element 4 test, which Mattie described as "really, really hard!" Whether she is the youngest Extra in the US is difficult to determine since the FCC no longer makes date-of-birth information public.
Several of the very youngest amateur operators in the US have been female. In 1948, Jane Bieberman, W3OVV (now Jane De Nuzzo and still holding the same call sign), made the December cover of QST for getting her General ticket when she was just barely 10 years old. Rebecca Rich, KB0VVT--a very active amateur--got her Extra ticket in 1997 at age 8. The parents of both girls were amateur licensees.
Mattie's own ham radio heritage also may have been a big plus. Her late great grandfather, S.A. "Sam" Sullivan, was W6WXU; his daughter, Joan Brady--Mattie's grandmother--now holds his former call sign. That makes her a fourth-generation ham. Mattie concedes that she would not have made it to Extra without a lot of study help and guidance from her parents (her mom, Charlotte, is AC7XM) and practice examinations on the QRZ.com Web site http://www.qrz.com/p/testing.pl. The Clausons all are ARRL members.
Mattie says she continues to enjoy working HF SSB, especially DX. In addition to various HF nets, she also regularly checks into the Douglas County Amateur Radio Emergency Service Net as a visitor. Aside from ham radio, her dad says, Mattie--who is home schooled with two younger sisters--is "a regular kid who likes riding her bike, playing with her sisters and friends and flying her toy airplanes. She even likes to play in the mud."
Mattie hopes to be sporting a new vanity call sign soon. Her father says she's applied for AE7MC--Amateur Extra 7 (year-old) Mattie Clauson, her dad explained.
'Twas the month after Christmas,
and all through the house
Nothing would fit me, not even a blouse.
The cookies I'd nibbled, the eggnog I'd taste
At the holiday parties had gone to my waist.
When I got on the scales there arose such a number!
When I walked to the store (less a walk than a lumber).
I'd remember the marvelous meals I'd prepared;
The gravies and sauces and beef nicely rared,
The wine and the rum balls, the bread and the cheese
And the way I'd never said, "No thank you, please."
As I dressed myself in my husband's old shirt
And prepared once again to do battle with dirt---
I said to myself, as I only can
"You can't spend a winter disguised as a man!"
So--away with the last of the sour cream dip,
Get rid of the fruit cake, every cracker and chip
Every last bit of food that I like must be banished
"Till all the additional ounces have vanished.
I won't have a cookie--not even a lick.
I'll want only to chew on a long celery stick.
I won't have hot biscuits, or corn bread, or pie,
I'll munch on a carrot and quietly cry.
I'm hungry, I'm lonesome, and life is a bore---
But isn't that what January is for?
Unable to giggle, no longer a riot.
Happy New Year to all and to all a good diet!
~ author unknown ~
The FCC is working on at least two fronts to eliminate unlicensed operation from the 10-meter band. In January, FCC Special Counsel Riley Hollingsworth sent warning notices to two shipping companies regarding reports to the Commission that some of the companies' vehicles may be the source of illegal radio transmissions on the amateur band. One of the companies, UPS, has offered its full cooperation.
"Many truckers use CB radio, which does not require a license," Hollingsworth pointed out in letters to UPS offices in Ohio and Indiana and to R&L Transfer Inc of Ohio. "However, any person using a radio transmitter on the Amateur Radio bands must possess a station and operator license." Hollingsworth asked the over-the-road shippers to advise their drivers that such radio operation could subject them to heavy fines and seizure of their radio equipment.
UPS Attorney Daniel N. Tenfelde responded to assure Hollingsworth that his company was taking its Warning Notice seriously and has launched a full investigation. "We discovered that some employees had obtained CB radios that contained a mechanism allowing them to switch frequencies into the 10-meter Amateur Radio band," he told Hollingsworth in a January 28 letter. "It is not UPS policy to allow equipment such as this to be used in our vehicles." He said UPS' contract with the Teamsters Union allows only for CB radios.
Tenfelde said UPS is working with its transportation and labor groups to let drivers know that such unlicensed operation violates both UPS policy and FCC regulations.
In a parallel development, the FCC issued a Citation to Jonathan Edward Stone, doing business as Omnitronics/Pacetronics for alleged violation of §302(b) of the Communications Act and §2.803(a)(1) of the Commission's rules. An investigation by the FCC's Dallas field office led the Commission to allege that Omnitronics/Pacetronics was offering more than two dozen uncertificated "Citizens Band" transceivers via its Web site. The FCC says Omnitronics/Pacetronics was marketing the units as Amateur Radio equipment, which does not require FCC certification (formerly known as "type acceptance").
"The Commission has evaluated radio frequency devices similar to those listed and concluded that the devices at issue are not only amateur radios but can easily be altered for use as Citizens Band devices as well," said the FCC Citation from FCC Dallas District Director James D. Wells. The FCC said it concluded that the devices fall within the definition of CB transmitters that "cannot legally be imported or marketed in the United States." That would include so-called "export" models, the Citation said, pointing to a 2000 revision of §2.1204(a)(5) of its rules.
Citing §95.655(a) of the FCC's rules, Wells noted that "dual-use CB and Amateur Radio of the kind at issue here may not be certificated under the Commission's rules." The clarification was added to Part 95--which governs the Citizens Band--"to explicitly foreclose the possibility of certification of dual-use CB and amateur radios and thereby deter use by CB operators of frequencies allocated for Amateur Radio use," he said.
The FCC Citation also warned Unitronics/Pacetronics regarding the requirement of FCC certification of external RF amplifiers or amplifier kits capable of operating below 144 MHz as well as the prohibition against marketing RF amplifiers or amplifier kits capable of operating between 24 and 35 MHz.